Security- DNS filtering

Posted:
1 year, 10 months
ago

I’m Albert Steed with Advanced Computer Solutions talking about security. So far we’ve talked about antivirus and we’ve talked about OS patching and we’ve talked about third-party software patching. Now I want to talk about the fourth tool that we use which is called OpenDNS.

So, OpenDNS is a service that sits out on the Internet and it’s a cloud-based service that will allow you to do all kinds of things from filtering what kind of website you can visit to providing a great security level for your computer so that known sites or known places that have done bad things you’re not allowed to visit them.

Basically, this service is extraordinarily low on overhead and it doesn’t actually do anything on your computer. It’s just a configuration that you do on your computer and so there’s no running and it doesn’t slow you down or anything that an antivirus can.

So, the DNS or OpenDNS is the domain name service. So, the domain name service is the service that exists on the Internet that allows these Internet addresses which are either a series of numbers or if it’s IPv6 it’s numbers and letters. And you don’t want to 123.85.22.66 and have that be yahoo.com or that would be cumbersome. So, the DNS takes those numbers and turns it into yahoo.com and then you can remember yahoo.com, so it’s like a phone book for the Internet and converts numbers into names.

So, this service sits out there and it’s a database of good places to go and basically if you go to a place that you're not supposed to it redirects you back a spot that says, ‘Hey, don’t go there. This is bad. Contact your IT guy for further information.’